Sunday 13 May 2001 11.16 EDT
First published on Sunday 13 May 2001 11.16 EDT

Friends and fans of Douglas Adams yesterday paid tribute to the bestselling author of the comic science fiction odyssey, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who has died in the United States, aged 49.

Adams, whose books sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, will be remembered for the bizarre comic creations that populated the Hitch Hiker's books, but were first aired via a BBC radio series in 1978. The series was an overnight success and rescued Adams from the life of a struggling comedy sketch writer. It spawned a television show, five books and other spin-offs. Adams had moved out to California two years ago to work on a Hollywood movie of the show.

He died of a heart attack on Friday. Several days earlier a doctor had warned him that he had high blood pressure. 'It was very sudden. He did not suffer,' said Adams' spokeswoman Sophie Astin.

Friends paid tribute last night. 'I am devastated. He had the biggest heart in the world and it has let him down. All his friends are just in shock,' said writer Cathy Lette.

Prominent figures at the BBC also mourned Adams' death. 'Douglas will be hugely missed by a host of friends and millions of fans around the world. He was a gifted writer; a one-off talent. We'll miss him enormously,' said Alan Yentob, director of drama and entertainment.

Geoffrey Perkins, the BBC's head of comedy who produced the original radio series, said: 'I've known Douglas for 25 years. He was absolutely one of the most creative geniuses to ever work in radio comedy. He probably wrote one of the greatest radio comedy series ever, certainly the most imaginative.'

Adams had also written two comic novels about a detective called Dirk Gently. More recently he had become involved with the internet. Several years ago he set up a website, H2G2.com, that had people filing reports from 85 countries on anything that caught their eye. The idea was to provide a useful guide to modern life or - as Adams might have put it - life, the universe and everything.

Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952 and christened Douglas Noel. This led him to joke later that he had been DNA in Cambridge several months before Watson and Crick made their famous discovery. He was five when his parents divorced. He moved in with his mother in Essex and went to Brentwood Prep School, which boasts an astonishing array of famous old boys, including right-wing historian David Irving, Home Secretary Jack Straw and TV presenter Noel Edmonds.

Adams went to St John's College, Cambridge, and tried to join the Footlights. However, he found the atmosphere too elitist and joined a rival student company instead. But he was inspired by the Footlights alumni that made up Monty Python. 'I wanted to be a writer-performer like the Pythons,' he once said. 'In fact I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was, in fact, taken.'

After university he worked briefly with Python Graham Chapman on a TV series that never got beyond a pilot and then drifted into a bizarre series of jobs that included working as a chicken shed cleaner and a hotel bodyguard. The work allowed him to keep writing scripts but left him short of cash. Then came a meeting with Perkins and a chance to make a radio show based loosely on Adams' experiences hitch-hiking through Europe but set in space.

By the time the show aired it had taken nine months' work and Douglas had been paid just £1,000. The resulting books all became bestsellers and he was given an advance of $2 million by his US publishers.

Following on from the Hitch Hiker's books came a spoof dictionary, written with John Lloyd, called The Meaning of Liff. Adams then took a different direction and in 1990 wrote Last Chance To See, an ecological book inspired by a trip to Madagascar.

Adams married barrister Jane Belson in 1991 and they had a daughter, Polly.